Telescope Live Reviews 93

I have been doing astrophotography since 2007. I was doing remote astronomy with another company up until a few years ago when I discovered Telescope Live. TL simply offered so much more for the money. And, very importantly, they never stop innovating. They are always improving their services. They don't just talk about doing new things, they really DO new things. They simply have more and better equipment than the competition. Recently they retired all their CCD cameras and replaced them with CMOS cameras. What an amazing improvement. And they rolled all of this out in very short order. I love the fact that they are opening new telescopes in other countries. I like that I can schedule my own imaging or save time by picking up data that they have already scheduled. You can use a wide variety of filters during imaging as well. Their are many on line tutorials and I understand that we may be starting an on line forum within TL as well. I like the idea of keeping everything easily available in house. This sure beats buying your own equipment, waiting for good weather and spending hours of my time monitoring the whole thing. I can simply set up my imaging session, schedule it and pick up my raw data the next morning. Then I can process the data from the comfort of my own computer any time I want. Pricing is available for any budget as well. All my interactions with the staff have been great. I've even got my own website show casing my many photos from TL.

Telescope Live provides access to a huge data base of high quality raw images for subsequent processing to generate award winning astrophotographs, at very reasonable cost. The data base is very easy to search.

The telescopes they use are professional quality, that are not affordable for even the most enthusiastic amateur, and are located in dark sites with minimal light pollution, where the weather allows imaging for most of the year. As a result the data base is constantly growing. Their observatories are located in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, giving access to a huge area of the sky.

The site has a nice Gallery section where users can upload their final images, and see how other users processed the same data. My data processing skills have grown enormously as as result of experience gained using data from Telescope Live.

Very good concept, hi quality setup... but...
...unfortunately a lot of acquisitions (in the bundles) are very bad quality (due to the cloudy sky)
I have bought all datas about Helix Nebula in SHO and LRGB (more 32 Hours) but the major part of datas frome Oiii and SII filter are cover by cloudy veil... and same issue with the LRGB sets
I have tested the Squid Nebula bundle... Lot of datas useless due to motion blur (bad guidance I think)
In this set we have only 2 pictures on Ha with a ronder stars (6 in the set)
In the OIII filter we can save maybe 10 pictures... (108 in the bundle...)
...

too bad...

Telescope Live has given me the opportunity to photograph both in the southern hemisphere and in an environment where the weather is more often clear than not, not to mention the extremely dark skies. The images I have been able to process and then publish are by far the clearest and most detailed I have ever had, probably because of the high quality (and high expense) of the cameras, telescopes, and mounts they are taken on. Amateur astrophotography changed dramatically with the advent of digital cameras and appears to have made another quantum leap with the availability of remote imaging from ideal, mountaintop locations.

TL provides wonderful datasets that have allowed me to take my image processing skills to the next level.

Additionally, their customer service is excellent and they are always doing their best to improve the product and make the user experience efficient and user friendly.

Telescope live is very helpful. I feel bad for giving them a bad review, but they went above and beyond to fix the problem.

Had problems but they helped and fixed the problem. They are very good and its a great place to get DSOs.

TL 3.0 is a great improvement!
Telescope Live was already a very easy way to introduce yourself to astronomy and astrophotography.
Remote astrophotography allow you to deal with setups and meteorological conditions you can't obtain in your own backyard. The possibility to treat and work with very high quality images improves your skills very quickly and permits the comparison with your own images. Moreover the access to tutorials made by very experienced astrophotographers is more benefits.
The possibility to grab one clicks observation and to check the image before grabbing is very useful for beginners. Overall quality has been improved. Bundles are also appreciated. And advanced requests stay perhaps for more experienced users.
Finally the chat is very reactive and problems or questions are solved within hours...
Thank you!!!

As an astrophotographer imaging in the UK can be an issue due to light pollution and poor weather.

Telescope Live gives me the opportunity to image from different sites in foreign countries at an affordable price.

The new user interface at Telescope live 3.0 is so easy to use, with a range of files ready and waiting for you.

Or if you prefer you can book a Telescope and take your own images at affordable prices.

It is the best online platform for astrophotography.

In tropical Australia, storm season often means months of cloudy conditions. Telescope.Live allows me to stay active with my hobby by continuing mission planning, data collection and processing (even though I'm not physically standing next to the scope) during these cloudy months. Being able to access professional telescopes costing more than my house for a few bucks a month is a great deal.

Great site for both beginners and experienced astrophotographers

"My greatest realization is the importance of really good data. I have to question how much it would cost me to purchase telescope equipment that would even come this close to TelescopeLive's data. Well at least now I have a measuring stick of sorts. I can well see I keep my low end gear is just for the joy of capturing my own images and spoil myself with the Telescope Live data sets for my creative work. I thank TelescopeLive for helping me get to the next level of the steep learning curve of this awesome hobbie!"

Excellent service, especially with the latest 3.0 update. Now with the new image archive made available, a large amount of data is always available.

Telescope Live just keeps getting better and better. Especially for those of us who live near cities or climates with a winter, the choice to go out and image under poor conditions or log in to Telescope Live gets to be easy.

I was seriously considering dropping a lot of money on a bunch of equipment that I don't even know how to use just because of the love I have for astronomy AND photography. I found Telescope Live and now I'm instantly working on raw images and turning them into....well, pretty messy images. But that's the beauty of Telescope Live, there are tutorials from start to finish with live help offered. The monthly is more than affordable...I spend more in one night just on beer while just staring up at the sky. I recommend it to anyone, especially beginners like me. Once I fully understand what I'm doing and what I'm looking for, I will feel more comfortable spending on the equipment I need to go out and capture the images myself.

This is a great service, when the sky is cloudy at least there is a place to go to get data. With version 3 it is even better. A good place to learn how to process data and get it also. With telescopes in North and South you have access to objects you can't see from your home.

Don't pay for a plan. I've paid for a plan for 2 months and have a few decent 1 click obersevation pictures from my free trial. The next 5 have been in limbo. I asked them why it's taking so long and they reply it weather. I checked the weather in the country that the telescope is in and the weather is usually clear on the day the pictures are due, but it renews and says recalculating.

At first I wasn’t clear about what changes were going to be implemented but I was hopeful that I would be able to access more subframes for increased integration time. With this change I knew that processed images would be decreased in noise levels on average, accompanied by some increase in detail for a specific target image.
At present there are many one click observations coming in which if processed one group at a time would be a huge drain on personal time. Combining multiple one click sessions makes sense in terms of the outcome of better quality images. Though one can do this at present, it isn’t easily facilitated. If we desire we can now add other data sets that we may have missed in the past.
I’m sure that there are other adjustments that can be made in the future to facilitate the use of this new format, but my own personal view is that these adjustments will make Telescope Live more user friendly as a whole.

Ray Blais

I was skeptical of the new price changes, and honestly still am. At the Bronze level of 5 credits perhaps picking the lowest credit OCOs I figure 10 or so per month. Which is not bad though lower than a good month under the old system.
I have not changed my mind regarding pricing (yet), BUT the new platform is far superior to the old.
The ability to choose One Clicks that you know are completed is really awesome. The bundles are also pretty awesome feature (though I have not used it).
The overall experience is much better. Being able to choose completed One Click is far better than the choose and hope model. I try to grab One Clicks of the southern hemisphere that I cannot see. Now I can grab them knowing I actually have some data! The cost the cost is very reasonable, better than any other remote site I know of. Overall excellent system!